Letters

Back at the slip her chauffeur was waiting; Jane had him toss her the forward dock lines and made fast, then gave me a hand with the aft and spring lines. Then she said, Dad, and I quote: “That was just delightful, Todd. We must do it again. Soon. Nighty-night now.”

No irony, no double entendre. Yet she had shown, out there in the channel, that she was capable of both, and of sentimental recollection too. Indeed, as we’d shucked our duds out by Red Nun 20, I’d set about amending my whole conception of Jane’s historical amnesia; now I was obliged to revise the amendment. More than that pants suit had been doffed and redonned; even when the only white left on her was what had been under her bikini in Tobago, I realized now she’d never acknowledged unambiguously our old affair; Todds Point was where she’d lived as well as where she’d 8-L’d me. A fresh frisson: had this been, for Jane, no sweet replay at all? Was she still and forever in that left-hand column, doing everything for the first time?

Well, Dad: here I sit aboard the Osborn Jones like Keats’s knight at arms by the sedgeless lake: alone, palely loitering, enthralled. And baffled to the balls, sir! Could #8 & #10 R, my reseduction, whether or not Jane was conscious of the echoes, be simply another Mack Enterprise? A bribe? A retainer? It doesn’t seem impossible; with Jane, not even quite cynical. I think of the chap in Musil’s Man without Qualities who only seems a hypocrite because of his spontaneous, genuine feeling for those who happen to be in a position to further his interests. I think of Aristotle’s sensible observation in the Ethics, that the emotion of love among the young is typically based upon pleasure, among the elderly upon utility. Then I think of that O, and cease to care.

O my heart. Whatever Jane felt out there at the dewpoint, among the blue herons, black cans, red giants, and white dwarfs, your ancient son felt, more than passion, an ardent sweetness: a grateful astonishment that life can take, even so late, so sweet and surprising a turn. Or, if after all no turn was taken, I feel at least a grateful indulgence of that Sentimental Formalist, our Author, for so sweetly, neatly — albeit improbably — tying up the loose ends of His plot.

The earth has spun nearly around again since; the world with it. Many a one has been begotten, born, laid, or laid to rest since I began this letter. Apollo-10 is counting down; #11’s to land us on the moon before summer’s done. It’s been years, Dad, since I gave a fart why you hanged yourself in the basement on Saturday 2/2/30. You frightened me then about myself, whom I’ve ceased to fear, and turned into a monologue the dialogue we’d never begun. Only the young trouble their heads about such things.

10. Mar. 28-May 16, 1969: Another Mack v. Mack shapes up, and Jane reresumes our affair, at least to the extent of reseducing me.

Where will my #11 land me, this second time around? That’s all I’m really curious about, now I’ve seen the pattern. Yesterday I took an interest in (and the Tragic View of) the careers of Charles de Gaulle and Abe Fortas, the campus riots, my government’s war against the Vietnamese, even the enlargement of our knowledge of the universe, not to mention the disposition of Harrison Mack’s estate and the threatened blackmailing of Jane Mack. But I seem to have lost something overboard last night: today nothing much interests me except that O, which fills my head, this cabin, all space. I can hear nothing else; don’t want to hear anything else. I’ve written these pages, imagined that pattern, just to hear it again.

O that O.

If I try to sleep now (it’s getting on to cocktail time again), will my dreams rerun that episode? Never mind history, this letter, the rest of the alphabet. Bugger off, Dad. Author of us all: encore! Back to #10 R, Red Nun 20, Jane’s O!

I: Jacob Horner to the Author. Declining to rewalk to the end of the road.

5/15/69

TO:

Professor John Barth, Department of English, SUNY/ Buffalo, Buffalo, New York 14214, U.S.A.

FROM:

Jacob Horner, Fort Erie, Ontario, Canada

Sir:

In a sense, I Am Indeed the Jacob Horner of your End of the Road novel, for which you apologize in your letter to me of May 11, Mother’s Day, Rogation Sunday, birthday of Irving Berlin and Salvador Dali. Never mind in what sense.

Your story of having discovered that manuscript in Pennsylvania in December 1955 I Find less convincing than the novel itself. As for your work in progress, your inquiries, your proposal: I am Not Interested.

You would hazard the remobilization of “Jacob Horner”; how shall Jacob Horner Go About the resurrection of “Rennie Morgan,” whose widower intends to kill me if I don’t Bring Her Back To Life by Labor Day?